ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,770,113, issued on Oct. 20, was assigned to Snap Inc. (Santa Monica, Calif.).
"Display duration assignment for ephemeral messages" was invented by Nicholas Allen (Venice, Calif.), Donald Giovannini (Venice, Calif.), Chiayi Lin (Venice, Calif.), Robert Murphy (Venice, Calif.) and Evan Spiegel (Los Angeles).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A server has a processor and a memory storing instructions executed by the processor to maintain an ephemeral gallery of ephemeral messages. An ephemeral message is posted to the ephemeral gallery. The ephemeral message has an associated message duration parameter and a gallery participation parameter. An e...